Frustration- The Slippery Slope of Distraction.

"Having come to the light of the knowledge of the glory of Christ from Scripture or by the preaching of the gospel, let us regard it as our duty to meditate frequently on his glory. It is the neglect of meditation that keeps so many Christians in a feeble state, regardless of their privileges. They hear of these things and assent to the truth of them or at least they do not question them. But they never solemnly meditate on them. They think that meditation is above their capabilities, or they are totally ignorant of how to go about it, or they are not too concerned about it, or they treat it as fanaticism. Many cannot meditate because their minds are so cluttered up with earthly things. The mind must be spiritual and holy, freed from all earthly clutter. It must be raised above things here below if we wish to meditate on the glory of Christ. So many are strangers to this duty because they do not mortify their earthly desires and concerns."

-John Owen from his book "The Glory of Christ"

So what is it in this life that actually matters and why do I find it so hard to stay focused on it? Well, the answer to the first question is glorifying Jesus Christ and His work on the glorious cross for my once wicked soul. And I'm still trying to figure out how to pinpoint the answer to the second one. All I can say is, what in the world? How is it that two years ago the Lord could completely come in and intervene in my life, draw me unto Himself, convict me of my sin, grant me repentance, and completely captivate my life as a whole....and yet, now, I'm left just wondering where it all went. Don't get me wrong, this is not a post about me questioning my salvation. It's nothing of the sort. The writing of this post, as crazy as it seems, is evidence in itself that I am saved, because the Lord is bringing to light many things that need to change in my life. Chastisement- a very good sign that you are a child of God.

So the quote that I put up at the top of this post really woke me up yesterday when I read it on the plane. John Owen did a really good job of awakening me with his descriptions of the glory of Christ...and then followed it up with a slap in the face with his calling out of the lazy people who are finding it hard to stay focused on it. I'm not being too hard on myself either (even though a lot of Christians would identify with the same convictions of not being focused enough on it either) but I'm seriously tired of letting myself off the hook. This is getting ridiculous. How does Christianity become so 'cultural' and 'watered down' anyways? Because people compare themselves to people who profess Christ, who then compare themselves to other people who profess Christ (instead of comparing themselves to the Bible), and the cycle gets more and more vicious until everyone just walks around thinking they are off the hook because they don't look any different from Johnny down the street who grew up in church and has a WWJD bumper sticker on his car. Excuse my tangent, but I mean isn't it true? And isn't that the very thing I am guilty of right now as I watch my walk with the Lord go down the tube on account of MY laziness and unwillingness to remove unnecessary worldly clutter from my life? Well, since most of you don't know me or my life...the answer to that question is YES. YES that is exactly what is happening to me right now, and I am confessing it.

What amazes me is how I could have let it get so out of control. I mean I got so lazy. It started out with the small things a few months back and just kind of built itself up, until a huge wall formed and I found myself surrounded, once again, by my selfishness and worldliness. I HATE worldliness, and yet I'm afraid right now that if you took a snapshot of my life you would see a whole lot of it. Whatever happened to the gospel being on my lips continuously? Why am I not taking advantage of witnessing opportunities like I used to? Where has the reign on my tongue gone? Where is my boldness that I used to have? Why am I finding myself enslaved to so much sin? These questions are driving me nuts because I'm finding myself completely helpless in changing a thing about the situation. I'm finding myself completely without the strength to simply 'pull myself up by the bootstraps' and start performing better. So this isn't the point in the post where I guilt trip myself into doing a better job and start turning inward to make myself change this. No way, my theology teaches me better than that- and so does the word of God.

I am seriously not resting in Christ. I am not denying myself. I am not mortifying my flesh. I'm not setting my mind on the things above. And it is all because I am being seriously lazy and not spending enough time TRULY taking in His word. I am making no true effort to mortify sin or remove worldly clutter. It is not my job to change myself. But it is my job to meditate on Christ and His glory! It is my job fight like crazy against the powers and principalities of this world, and most of all, my own sinful nature. I have corruption in my heart- I SERIOUSLY cannot fall asleep on this fact. And if I do, the result is a life that starts spinning out of control, even for a believer. The fact of inevitable indwelling sin does not mean I excuse it; no, in fact as a child of God, I hate it. And I must not fall asleep on it or it will take over and surely enslave me. I'm afraid that is exactly what I have let happen and I am now reaping the consequences.

One night getting ready for bed, just last week, this feeling was so strong and I felt so dirty that I was trying so hard to externally remove it. This is so sad, but it's true. I took a shower, I washed my face and hands, I scrubbed my teeth with extra toothpaste, I tried to get all my ducks in a line so that MAYBE I would find peace and comfort for a moment. Just maybe I wouldn't feel so dirty. WOW. How incredibly sad to even recall that about myself. I wasn't aware that was the reason why I was doing it at the time...but shortly after it dawned on me. You see, for a short time I lost sight of the glory of Christ. I wasn't making a serious effort to keep thoughts about the Lord and His glory in the forefront of my mind and look what came about. My life started to slowly spin out of control. To think that you can struggle with this and it not affect everything is completely absurd. To think that you can 'compartamentalize' in your life the gospel of Jesus Christ, which alone brings life, is completely absurd. My relationships were getting sloppy; I started to get lazy even with the people I love the most- namely my long distance relationship with my boyfriend out in California. A godly relationship with him even started to lose its fervor all because I was too busy being cluttered with the world. What a shame. But as shameful as that sounds, how much more shameful is it to lose fervor for your Lord, the one who reached down and saved you from the muck and mire of your sins? Only the blood of Christ can wash me clean of my iniquities, but not taking the time to retreat to the foot of the cross in humility is just pathetic. I am so thankful that the Lord brings these things to our attention so that we may awake out of this deranged state. I am so grateful for repentance and the healing that it brings.

All of this can be described as deception at its finest. And mix deception in with distraction and you have a deadly combination. Please listen to me...you cannot fight deception OR distraction on your own. Are you kidding me? You will just continue to fall in deeper and you will wonder why you can't seem to turn things around. You can't turn things around because you CAN'T turn things around. God is the one who TURNED things around for you in the first place when He saved you from your walk down an extremely wide path to Hell and placed you on the straight and narrow. And if He is the one who was in charge of doing that from the beginning, then why would it be any different now? Don't chase worldly things when they are the root of the problem. AND DO NOT put your affection on worldly things either because it will just leave you deceived and distracted. You will be left wondering how you got so off track in such a short period of time. Please do not keep turning to yourself; I promise you, you are mostly the problem. So what should we do then? We should turn to Christ. Quit putting it off. I don't care if you just sinned and you are ashamed. RUN to Christ. He is always always way more willing to forgive us than we are capable of sinning. Run to Christ, even when your deceived heart is not inclined to do so. If you are not spending time in prayer and in the word then you cannot expect to be able to fight temptation when it presents itself. The Bible says that the Lord never leaves you to a temptation without providing a way to escape it. Don't be too lazy to find the escape.

It seriously is a vicious cycle, my friends. If you are not making the effort to meditate on the glories of Christ and His word, then you are bound to lose your passion and zeal and desire for the things of God. And if you lose your desire, you will stop spending time in prayer and in the word. And if you stop that, it just leads to more worldly clutter and less thoughts of Christ...thus starting the cycle over again. Do you see now how even the strongest of believers can find themselves on the slippery slope? Faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God. Do not take your sin lightly even for the slightest moment or you will learn the hard way. I am so grateful that the Lord has revealed this to me and even provided the desire to put in out in writing. I know I needed to hear it.

"For I say, through the grace given unto me, to every man that is among you, not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think; but to think soberly, according as God hath dealt to every man the measure of faith."
Romans 12:3


Enjoy this wonderful sermon by Charles Spurgeon on Indwelling sin:

Have You Ever Read Romans 9? (James White)

Here's a great exegesis of Romans 9 by Dr. James White. Enjoy.

Are Your Thoughts of God Too Human??

The following passage by A.W. Pink is probably one of the greatest passages that I can point to as a reason why one should go to such great lengths to preserve the truths of God and His character as it is described in the Bible, even amongst those that say we are 'divisive' or just being too nit-picky. No way. I was having that very conversation with someone a few weeks ago....we were discussing Calvinists and this person didn't understand why they were so 'hard headed' about election and their doctrines of grace. After all, there is so much common ground right? As I began to go into how it is just SO frustrating to see God being portrayed with characteristics that just simply ARE not Him, I tried to explain why it is not just a simple difference that should be overlooked. Erroneous depictions of God are DISHONORING to Him. I was trying to point out that a God that is not in sovereign control of everything is not a God that is worthy of being glorified. If God did not decree everything that happens, then why should we give Him glory for it? A God that simply knows all things but didn't decree it is not worthy of our admiration. Anyways, it was during that very conversation that I happened to have Pink's The Nature of God book sitting by me, and by the grace of God I flipped to this passage and read it out loud. Let's just say, it ended all discussion up to that point and led to me and the person sitting there in awe of the Lord and His glory. This passage may be a bit lengthy, but I promise it is WELL WORTH the read. Enjoy.

In one of his letters to Erasmus, Luther said, "Your thoughts of God are too human." Probably that renowned scholar resented such a rebuke, the more so, since it proceeded from a miner's son. Nevertheless, it was thoroughly deserved. We, too, prefer the same charge against the vast majority of the preachers of our day and against those who, instead of searching the Scriptures for themselves, lazily accept their teachings. The most dishonoring conceptions of the rule and reign of the Almighty are now held almost everywhere. To countless thousands, even professing Christians, the God of Scriptures is quite unknown.

Of old, God complained to an apostate Israel, "Thou thoughtest that I was altogether such as one as thyself" (Psalm 50:21). Such must now be His indictment against apostate Christendom. Men imagine the Most High is moved by sentiment, rather than by principle. They suppose His omnipotency is such an idle fiction that Satan can thwart His designs on every side. They think that if He has formed any plan or purpose at all, then it must be like theirs, constantly subject to change. They openly declare that whatever power He possesses must be restricted, lest He invade the citadel of man's free will and reduce him to a machine. They lower all-efficacious atonement, which redeems everyone for whom it was made, to a mere remedy, which sin-sick souls may use if they feels so disposed. They lessen the strength of the invincible work of the Holy Spirit to an offer of the Gospel which sinners may accept or reject as they please.

The god of this century no more resembles the Sovereign of Holy Writ than does the dim flickering of a candle the glory of the midday sun. The god who is talked about in the average pulpit, spoken of in the ordinary Sunday school, mentioned in much of the religious literature of the day, and preached in most of the so-called Bible conferences, is a figment of human imagination, an invention of maudlin sentimentality. The heathen outside the pale of Christendom form gods of wood and stone, while millions of heathen inside Christendom maufacture a god out of their carnal minds. In reality, they are but atheists, for there is no other possible alternative between an absolutely supreme God and no God at all. A god whose will is resisted, whose designs are frustrated, whose purpose is checkmated, possesses no title to deity and, far from being a fit object of worship, merits nothing but contempt.

The supremacy of the true and living God might well be argued from the infinite distance which separates the mightiest creatures from the Creator. He is the Potter; they are but the clay in His hands, to be molded into vessels of honor or to be dashed into pieces (Psalm 2:9) as He pleases. Were all the denizens of heaven and all the inhabitants of earth to combine in open revolt against Him, it would cause Him no uneasiness. It would have less effect upon His eternal, unassailable throne than the spray of the Mediterranean's waves has upon the towering rocks of Gibraltar. So puerile and powerless is the creature to affect the Most High, Scripture tells us that when the Gentile heads unite with apostate Israel to defy Jehovah and His Christ, "He that sitteth in the heavens shall laugh" (Psalm 2:4).

The absolute and universal supremacy of God is plainly affirmed in many Scriptures. "Thine, O LORD, is the greatness, and the power, and the glory, and the victory, and the majesty; for all that is in the heaven and the earth is thine; thine is the kingdom, O LORD, and thou art exalted as head above all...And thou reignest over all" (1 Chronicles 29:11-12). Norw "reignest" now, not "will do so in the Millennium." "O LORD God of our fathers, art not thou God in heaven? and rulest not thou over all the kingdoms of the heathen? and in thine hand is there not power and might, so that none [not even the devil himself] is able to withstand thee?" (2 Chronicles 20:6). Before Him presidents and popes, kings and emperors, are less than grasshoppers.

"But he is in one mind, and who can turn him? and what his soul desireth, even that he doeth" (Job 23:13). My reader, the God of Scripture is no make-believe monarch, no imaginary sovereign, but Kind of kings, and Lord of lords. "I know that thou cantst do every thing, and that no thought can be withholden from thee" (Job 42:2; or another translator, "no purpose of thine can be thwarted" (RSV). All that He has designed, He does. All that He has decreed, He perfects. All that he has promised, He performs. "But our God is in the heavens: he hath done whatsoever he hath pleased" (Psalm 115:3). Why has He? Because "there is no wisdom nor understanding nor counsel against the Lord" (Proverbs 21:30).

God's supremacy over the works of His hands is vividly depicted in Scripture. Inanimate matter, irrational creatures, all perform their Maker's bidding. At His pleasure, the Red Sea divided and its waters stood up as walls (Exodus 14); the earth opened her mouth, and guilty rebels went down alive into the pit (Numbers 16). When He so ordered, the sun stood still (Joshua 10:1-13); and on another occasion it went backward ten degrees on the dial of Ahaz (2 Kings 20:1-11). To exemplify His supremacy, God made ravens carry food to Elijah (1 Kings 17); iron to float on the waters (2 Kings 6:1-7); lions to be tame when Daniel was cast into their den (Daniel 6); fire to burn not when three Hebrews were flung into its flames (Daniel 3). Thus, "Whatsoever the LORD pleased, that did he in heaven, and in earth, in the seas, and all deep places" (Psalm 135:6).

God's supremacy is also demonstrated in His perfect rule over the wills of men. Ponder carefully Exodus 34. Three times in the year all the males of Israel were required to leave their homes and go up to Jerusalem. They lived in the midst of hostile people, who hated them for having appropriated their lands. What, then was to hinder the Canaanites from seizing the opportunity, during the absence of the men, to enslave the women and children and take possession of their farms? If the hand of the Almighty was not upon the wills even of wicked men, how could He make this promise beforehand, that none should so much as "desire" their lands (v.24)? "The king's heart is in the hand of the LORD, as the rivers of water: he turneth it whithersoever he will" (Proverbs 21:1)/

But, some may object, do we not read again and again in Scripture how men defied God, resisted His will, broke His commandments, disregarded His warnings, and turned a deaf ear to all His exhortations? Certainly we do. Does this nullify all we have said? If so, then plainly the Bible contradicts itself. But that cannot be. What the objector refers to is simply the wickedness of men against the external word of God. We have mentioned what God has purposed in Himself. The rule of conduct He has given us to walk by is perfectly fulfilled by none of us. His own eternal counsels are accomplished to their minutest details.

The absolute and universal supremacy of God is affirmed with equal positiveness in the New Testament. We are told that God "worketh all things after the counsel of his own will" (Ephesians 1:11)-- the Greek for the "worketh" means "to work effectually." For this reason we read, "For of him, and through him, and to him, are all things: to whom be glory forever. Amen." (Romans 11:36). Men may boast they are free agents, with a will of their own, and are at liberty to do as they please. But Scripture says to those who boast, "We will go into such a city, and continue there a year, and buy and sell, " that they ought to say, "If the Lord will" (James 4:13,15).

Here then is a sure resting place for the heart. Our lives are neither the product of blind fate nor the result of capricious chance. Every detail of them was ordained from all eternity and is now ordered by the living reigning God. Not a hair of our heads can be touched without His permission. "A man's heart deviseth his way: but the LORD directeth his steps" (Proverbs 16:9). What assurance, what strength, what comfort this should give the real Christian! "My times are in they hand" (Psalm 31:15). Then let me "rest in the LORD, and wait patiently for him" (37:7).

-A.W. Pink

Oh How Easily We Forget....

Oh how easily we forget the muck and mire we were in,
The times when we went without faith, the times as slaves to sin.
Oh how easily we forget the dreaded days when our eyes were blind,
When my thoughts were only selfish, and when true depravity was mine.
Oh how sick and sad to see, how we forget so easily
About the former days of empty praise we sang with worldly ease.

I for one, come before you Lord, so broken and contrite
So much so, my flesh and bones will get no rest tonight.
For quite a bit of time has passed, before I’ve now come to see,
That I have been living in great sin and running away from Thee.
O Lord, how easily I have forgotten, my former days of carnal lust
And instead of staying alert and awake and giving You my trust,
I have given way to earthly treasures which have rotted and collected dust.

But a child of God cannot go on deceived by its youthful lusts,
The Lord will stretch and pull and pry and chastise when He must.
Because it is so clear how fast we steer from the straight and narrow path
I know personally, for a season now I have lost all sight of His holy wrath.
And what a frightening time indeed, when you have lost that holy fear
Of the Lord and His righteousness; instead you put on the deceptively fake veneer.
Oh hypocrite, your lips may sing but your heart is far from Me
Father, I beg you now, draw me back in so I’m near to Thee.

Oh how easily I have forgotten the times of those dreaded days
When my heart was only selfish, so depraved in all my ways.
For just as easily as I’ve forgotten, just as easily I have seen
That same person I once left behind has come back in a nightmarish dream.
But I am grateful that tonight, Lord, You’ve given me eyes to see
That I’ve been blinded once again, and its time to come running back to Thee.
So I pace and pace, and pray and pray until wee hours of the night
Reading psalm after psalm, no rest or peace, not until I'm reconciled in Your sight.

What is this Lord, can’t I come back to fellowship with Thee?
Seems not until I’m stripped and still, knowing I’ve sinned in thought and deed.
I acknowledge it Lord, I’ve sinned against You! Be merciful to me indeed.
Deal with me not in your anger, I beg, and my confessions I do concede.
So for now, I know one thing, I will sit and wait upon your gracious gift,
The gift of repentance, Lord, so this great burden may finally lift.
I exalt you Lord, so abase me now, so I remember again those days
When I was so dependent on your grace, that it guided me in all my ways.
Because it seems that I’ve forgotten and now my heart has become so hard
Only to come to grips with my sin, feeling trapped and chained and barred.

But oh how merciful you are to the righteous, even though I don’t feel I qualify
I know I’ve been washed and cleansed by your blood, I pray the flesh now I mortify.
For sin leads to death, to destruction, to despair, and I’ve tasted that tonight
But gracious you have been to me, Lord, though I’ve been anything but upright.
You’ve heard my cry and delivered me, and your faithfulness is clear
You will have nothing to do with a prideful heart, but the humble you’ll draw near.
Why do I insist on forgetting this, like I haven’t learned it before in my past?
Transform me by the renewal of my mind, so this spiritual growth with last.

Oh how easily, Lord, I had forgotten my former days of bondage to sin.
So use it now to remind me how if I don’t have your grace I’ll be there again.

My Testimony

By the grace of God, I gave my testimony this past February at a FCA meeting here on campus (University of Florida). The audio was posted on the internet and one of my good friends put it to a video for me- the same friend who I mention in my testimony.

I know I made a short video of my testimony a while back, but here it is in audio form. I pray that it will be a testiment to the Lord's saving grace and His ability to rescue the deceived from the bondage of their self-righteousness and sins. Soli Deo Gloria!

And yes, that's a picture of me with James White!

Something the Carnal Heart Will NEVER Understand

Here is just a quick excerpt from Jeremiah Burroughs' book The Rare Jewel of Christian Contentment. I'm posting this because of a conversation my friend and I just had over dinner. We were talking about our lives and past experiences and how both of us have gone/are going through VERY similar situations. What happened to me a year and a half ago has been happening to her (freakishly similar) in the past 5 or so months, and it has been SUCH a blessing to see this verse right here really take place in my life:

2 Corinthians 1:3-4

Blessed be God, even the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies, and the God of all comfort; Who comforts us in all our tribulation, that we may be able to comfort them who are in any trouble, by the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted of God.

We are both athletes in which the Lord used our sports as a means to completely break us down and remove the pride out of our lives. The very same comfort that the Lord gave me during that time is the same comfort I was able to offer her through the grace of God while she was going through it. But we talked about how alllllll of that hard stuff that we went through was amazing now that we look back on it, because had we not gone through it we wouldn't have been broken in our sins and seen the work of Christ for the precious jewel that it is. We would still be serving the idols of our fleshly desires. It reminded me of the passage that I had read in this book and immediately after dinner we went back to my apartment to read through this. It is very biblical for those that the Lord calls His to be afflicted greatly here on earth. In fact, it is promised- but all our afflictions represent blessings in disguise.

The carnal mind will NEVER grasp or understand this concept, but thank the Lord that He gives us the understanding and the spiritual eyes to see the purpose of our afflictions. I know that it has been the great trials and sufferings in my life that have yielded the greatest amount of growth. I know I write about this a lot, and it almost seems to be the subject of all my posts, but honestly, it is the issue that I find myself in practically all the time. Whenever one trial ends, it seems another one begins, and we all need to keep it in perspective. The perspective that God is in control and if we are His then we can rest assuredly- knowing that it is all for the furthering of our sanctification and preparing us for that Great Day when we join our King for eternity. I write about it a lot because I am tempted to forget this truth on a DAILY basis. Also, I know a few people in my life who are being broken by the Lord and are having trouble seeing the light at the end of the tunnel. I have been there, and I pray that this passage brings them encouragment. And for those of you have experienced those tmes of being completely broken before an almighty God, rejoice for those moments of pure desperation that they brought, knowing that they helped refine your faith. I pray we will be transformed by the renewing of our minds with these truths, because it is an ongoing process that will be with us for as long as we are on this earth:

USUALLY WHEN GOD INTENDS THE GREATEST MERCY TO ANY OF HIS PEOPLE HE BRINGS THEM INTO THE LOWEST CONDITION.

God seems to go quite across and work in a contrary way: when he intends the greatest mercies to his people he first usually brings them into a very low conditions. If it is a bodily mercy, an outward mercy that he intends to bestow, he brings them physically low, and outwardly low; if it is a mercy in their possessions that he intends to bestow, he brings them low in that and then raises them; and in their reputations, he brings them low there, and then raises them; and in their spirits God ordinarily brings their spirits low and then raises their spirits. Usually the people of God, before the greatest comforts, have the greatest afflictions and sorrows. Now those who understand God's ways think that when God brings his people into sad conditions, he is leaving and forsaking them, and that God does not intend any great good to them. But a child of God, who is instructed in this way of God, is not troubled; 'My condition is very low,' he says, 'but this is God's way when he intends the greatest mercy, to bring men under the greatest afflictions.' When he intended to raise Joseph to be second in the kingdom, God cast him into a dungeon a little before. So when God intended to raise David and set him upon the throne, he made him to be hunted as a partridge in the mountains (

1 Samuel 26:29). God dealt this way with his Son: Christ himself went into glory by suffering (Hebrews 2:10); and if God so deals with his own Son, much more with his people.

A little before daybreak you will observe it is darker than it was any time before, so God will make our conditions a little darker before the mercy comes. When God bestowed the last great mercy at Naseby* we were in a very low condition; God knew what he had to do beforehand, he knew that his time was coming for great mercies: it is the way of God to do so. [*In 1645, the parliamentary army won a decisive victory against the Royalists at Naseby, Northamptonshire. The messages which comprise this book were preached by Burroughs in that year.] Be instructed aright in this course and way that God is accustomed to walk in and that will greatly help us to contentment.

IT IS THE WAY OF GOD TO WORK BY CONTRARIES, TO TURN THE GREATEST EVIL INTO THE GREATEST GOOD.

To grant great good after great evil is one thing, and to turn great evil into the greatest good is another, and yet that is God's way: the greatest good that God intends for his people, he many times works out of the greatest evil, the greatest light is brought out of the greatest darkness. I remember, Luther has a striking expression for this: he says, 'It is the way of God: he humbles that he might exalt, he kills that he might make alive, he confounds that he might glorify.' This is the way of God, he says, but every one does not understand it. This is the art of arts, and the science of sciences, the knowledge of knowledges, to understand this, that God when he will bring life, brings it out of death, he brings joy out of sorrow, and he brings prosperity out of adversity, yea and many times brings grace out of sin, that is, makes use of sin to work furtherance of grace. it is the way of God to bring all good out of evil, not only to overcome the evil, but to make the evil work toward the good. Now when the soul comes to understand this, it will take away our murmuring and bring contentment into spirits. But I fear there are but few who understand it aright; perhaps they read of such things, and hear such things in a sermon, but they are not instructed in this by Jesus Christ, that this is the way of God, to bring the greatest good out of the greatest evil.
 

Silent Thanks (Charles Spurgeon)

Ok, first of all I want to apologize for seemingly abandoning this blog for a small time...eeeek. As of a few weeks ago, I'm now back in Florida after about a month and a half of a break spent back home in Marietta, Ga. It's great to be back to my normal routine, but that also means that summer classes and summer basketball team workouts have started too! SO my schedule has been so hectic, and frankly I'm so tired when I get back to my room after a packed full day that I find myself resting or just flat out going to sleep :). (Not being able to operate at late hours of the night is hindering my blogging since that's usually when I'm at my best haha.) So anyway, I apologize for not keeping up. Hopefully after this week my body will be adjusted to the workouts and I won't be as worn out. But for now, I wanted to let you guys know that I haven't gone anywhere and also I wanted to quote this quick passage from the book I'm reading by Spurgeon: "The Power in Praising God."

Silent Thanks

"We may sometimes thank God not only by feeling thankful, living thankfully, and speaking our thanks, but by silently blessing Him. This consists of suffering patiently and accepting the bad as well as the good from Jehovah's hand; it is often better thanksgiving than the noblest psalm that the tongue could express. When you bow down before Him and say, "Not My will, but Yours, be done" (Luke 22:42), you show Him honor equal to the "Hallelujahs" of the angels. To feel not only submitted, but willing to be anything or nothing as the Lord wills it-- this is, in truth, to sing a song to our Well Beloved."

I think we all can relate to this feeling of silently enduring what the Lord is willing us to go through....and not just enduring it, but being thankful for it. What a task it is! One that can only be done with the strength given to us from our Lord Himself.

Have a great day today in the Lord and be blessed my brothers and sisters!